Mobile Internet Transforming House-Hunting in Pakistan

by Reporting Desk ·
Published March 3, 2015
· Updated February 19, 2016

Pakistani house-hunters have now embraced mobile Internet over traditional offline methods for finding their ideal home. This can be attributed to the growing number of 3G and 4G users across the country.

Pakistan currently boasts 30 million internet users, 15 million smartphone users and around 12.8 million active, monthly Facebook users, more than half of which are active via a mobile device. According to global search engine giant Google, 2014 was the year of mobile internet and this trend is expected to continue. As a result, more and more property seekers are turning to mobile tools such as smartphone apps to search current real estate listings.

Saad Arshed, Country Director of Pakistan’s best real estate website Lamudi.pk, commented that: “There is a mobile revolution underway in the real estate market in Pakistan. It is for this reason that we developed a mobile Lamudi app for both Android and iOS users in 2014. Both of these got a tremendous number of downloads within hours of their launch.

Moreover, our website is registering an increase in the number of views received from mobile devices, with over 860,000 mobile and tablet users visiting Lamudi.pk over the past six months. This points to the fact that mobile devices are becoming an integral part of house hunting in Pakistan. As the price of smartphones continues to drop, mobile internet will shape the future of real estate in Pakistan.”

In a survey conducted by Lamudi.pk in 2014, the bulk of the property sector acknowledged that with the advent of real estate portals, the number of people searching for property online has increased. Real estate agents and brokers reported an increasing number of property queries from overseas Pakistanis via these real estate websites. Pakistani nationals living overseas no longer need to return home to look for property as they can make the most of online tools, including mobile.

With the dramatic decrease in the price of smartphones and their widespread availability, the use of mobile house-hunting services is expected to accelerate over the next decade, Arshed said.